Becoming One Flesh

When G-d created man, “male and female, he created them” says Genesis (1:27).

It is also written that when Adam saw Eve’s perfection he exclaimed “this is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” and it was decreed that they become one flesh.

Yet, how can man and woman, who at times seems so opposite, ever truly be ‘one’?

We may immediately think of being entwined as lovers, united in passion. Yet, sex of itself can be divisive (think rape for example).

Ancient Rabbis tried to suggest that Adam and Eve were first one body (in Genesis 1) but Eve was separated from Adam in Genesis chapter 2.

Either way, relationships are tricky things.

Some relationships are greater than the sum of their parts, while others seem as if the individuals have become worse off.

A hint may be found in the command given to Adam and Eve and all their descendants ” “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it.”

Kabbalists were a little troubled by this verse. How can it apply to everyone, when not everyone either wants children or may not even be able to have them?

They answer we can all be creative, and create a new world.

As writer Rachana Goswami wrote: “Creation is the highest form of Divinity, and your birthright. Truth is, you are creating all the time. The central question in your life is whether you are doing this consciously or unconsciously. Conscious creation is what is needed now.”

So how can we creatively build a relationship that is united as ‘one flesh’?

When we think of becoming one, it is easy to think of being made whole, or complete, as if we are deficient without a partner.

True, a relationship does give us something that we cannot gain by ourselves.

However, if we enter a relationship, expecting that by offering out talents we will find a partner who will have the qualities we lack, then we will attract a person who is also incomplete expecting us to fulfill them.

Here is where we remember the command to multiply.

A half multiplied by a half is a quarter. If we give less than our totality then our relationship returns less than we began with.

Other relationships are like addition. Two single people, side by side on separate paths that never really are one.

However, 1 times 1 equals one. If we give our totality to the relationship we become one, but in fact a one that is greater than its parts.

If we think of the command to multiply, as having children, then a child is more than just mum and dad. She is part mum, part dad and part herself.

The difference comes in how we understand what it means to give and receive.

Notice, I said receiving – not taking. Receiving is active, it implies a relationship. Taking can be done without the others consent.

Receiving is not the same as taking.In a relationship, active receiving is as important as giving. When we allow a person to give from the heart, the giver also receives in the joy of giving and in receiving a thank you.

Giving thanks is in itself a gift.

This type of giving spirals upward and outward. It seeks harmony and love and is creatively divine.

However, proper giving requires that we give what a person needs. All to often smily, happy people recive generosity, while stressed, perhaps angry and hurting people, who obviously need help, are ignored.

Why? Because the giver  feels good ging to a happy person because it makes the giver happy.

This then is where giving a s a whole person can take us from giving because we want to receive, to giving because it is for the greater good.

As I wrote in Biblical Soul Mates that when a man is really more concerned with finding himself, his relationship is bitter because he never really connects. The woman can never be tha man who is seeking himself in her.

Of course, it is also true that we often seek wholeness by marrying someone who has the shadow side of our personality. It is only when we stop seeking ourselves and seek the totality of our lover that we then find our own wholeness.

We must creatively, poetically, seek what we deny in our self and in our lover.

Interestingly, the Jewish word for heart, is lev from two letters , lamed – beit. These two letters begin and end the Torah, Kabbalist’s claim the torah was Gods blueprint for creation reminding us that love is a sacred experience.

For Kabbalists, love for G-d is a macrocosm and love in marriage  its microcosm.

The kabbalist prays three times a day, and the middle pray can be the hardest, as it interferes with modern life. It is also true, that stopping, in the middle of the day to ring a lover for a few quick words of love can be inconvenient – but like midday prayer it is the most important.

The letter  beit is also the number two, which is why Rabbi Harav Ginsberg says the word for heart should be read two lameds.

In Kabbalah,  Lamed metaphorically brings down the creative divine spark down the neck into the body.

When both of us learn the power of mutually giving and receiving, and drawing down the sacred divine nature of love into our own bodies, and into our relationship, then our hearts can truly become one.